Tax collection day it was today, and Alaina bent over the slop-pit behind her father's cloth shop, retching dryly. Nothing came up but acid. She knew better than to try even a mouthful of dry bread. Wiping her mouth on the back of one sleeve, she tucked the folds of her shawl into her wide belt, adjusted the money-purse, and went back into the shop. The shop smelled of cedar incense, used to keep away moths. In the light from the mullioned front windows, bolts of blue and crimson cloth shone like jewels. As a child, she loved to bury her face in the fine wool, velvet, even brocade from far Eastern lands. How safe she had felt then, hidden.

A movement from the front of the shop startled her alert. A familiar shape stepped away from the shadows and became distinct.

"Come on then, my dearling."

Her father's teeth glinted, although the light came from behind him. He held the book of records close to his belly and pulled the door open for her. Walking past him into the bright, dusty street, she drew in a quick breath. The heat of the morning struck her in the face.

"You are too warmly dressed," her father said, as if he had forced her to display his wares and thus increase their value.

The tax collector and his scrawny assistant had, as usual, set up at a table in the market square, so that everyone could see that the King's law knew no favorites and all their neighbors paid their due. This early, the line was short; many were still abed or about their morning marketing. The plain wood table was covered only by a runner bearing the tax collector's sigil: a double-headed axe. Here Alaina's father set his record book and a common clay token used by even those who could not read or write. The book with its tiny looped inscriptions was proof of his own stature, his learning.

The tax collector, a squat, grizzled man in his age-stained tunic, glanced past the book as if it were no more than a speck of dust. He picked up the token, studied it with lower lip out-thrust and eyes squinted. "Miles the Cloth Trader. Fourteen princes of silver."

Exactly, Alaina thought, the same as it had been for the past ten years, since her mother died and she had been the one to accompany him to the market square on tax days. Behind her, a piglet squealed in its cage. Someone hawked turnips in a loud, hoarse voice.

The collector placed a ten-prince weight on the scales, then added four singles. The weights were soft lead, grimed from much handling, but not so much that the stamp of the King's own treasurer, the likeness of a prince long dead, could not be clearly seen.

At her father's signal, Alaina took out the coin-purse, double-layered leather carefully stitched in compartment, holding their hard-earned silver. Like traders' coins everywhere, some were small, some large, some round, some oval, even a few Markoni squares. One or two were not coins at all, but silver buttons, and the collector let those pass. Silver was silver.

As she placed the silver pieces, one by one, on the balance pan, Alaina rested her gaze on the weights, lowering her lids so that the image blurred. She felt the familiar, sickening sensation of moving closer and closer until she was inside the metal, she was the metal. Cold... Hard... Heavy...

She moved among the tiny metal-demons, felt them crowding in on her, throngs so many she could not count them, dancing to their silent music, whirling fast and faster...

Dance with us! Dance with us!

Yes, she thought, and felt the cold metal bubble of their delight. Dance... Lighter... She nudged the demons with that special sense, the one she must never let anyone know she had. Dancing faster now, and lighter, as if she were Earth itself longing for Heaven...

Lighter...

The pan bearing the weights lifted, swung up and down. The collector signaled her father to stop, plucked a small coin from the tray and handed it back, holding it between forefinger and thumb as if it might bite him. With his free hand, he waved them on.

For an instant, Alaina could not move. The feeling of oneness with the metal-demons ripped from her, leaving her senses raw and reeling. She swayed on her feet. Dimly, she felt her father's hand, hard as the lead and as cold, close around her arm. The tax collector might have glanced her way as they hurried past, although she could not be sure.

"What's wrong with you?" her father hissed, as soon as they were out of easy hearing. "Do you want to get caught? Do you know what they will do if they find out about you?"